Luigi's expansion to Lego's Super Mario set is coming soon. This is good news for kids and collectors alike. The popular Lego Super Mario set is essentially a game/toy hybrid, building levels of real-world Mario and guiding a Lego version of the diminutive plumber through them, challenging him to fight enemies and avoid traps. For children, this is clean, somewhat expensive play. That said, it is somewhat insidious that Lego Mario himself serves as an interactive billboard for the Luigi set.

The Brick Fan, a Lego fan site, has identified the Lego Super Mario Adventures with Luigi on Amazon China. Writer Allen Tran saved a product photo of the Luigi set, which shows Luigi going through an obstacle course, fighting off Bowser Kid, and encountering a pink Yoshi along the way. This listing is no longer up, so we don't know the price of this set. Other than that, it's pretty much what Lego fans would expect from a Mario expansion set.

However, the story darkens a bit when one considers that the Amazon China listing is not the first hint regarding the Luigi set. Instead, it comes from a firmware update for the first Lego Mario toy, and Eurogamer has a series of events to report. First, a LEGO enthusiast named Jay Phoenix on Twitter noticed that his Mario toy would shout "Luigi" three times when waking up from sleep mode. It was the first time Mario had ever done that.

Lego fans speculated that a Luigi toy must be on the way and contacted Lego's official Facebook page. The Danish LEGO brick builder replied with a droll smile, "Stay tuned."

On the one hand, this is simply a clever way to introduce a new toy into an ongoing product line. Luigi is one of the most popular characters in the Mario franchise. So far, so good. However, it seems a bit unhealthy for a toy to download a firmware update and say, "Go buy more."

Toys and advertising have had something of a rocky history over the past 30 years. First, it is important to understand that very young children generally do not understand the difference between a TV show and an ad. in the 1980s, then-President Ronald Reagan and the conservative FCC passed a boneheaded set of regulations on how advertisers could (and could not) sell products to children They did. Have you ever wondered why children's television prior to the 1980s focused on educational programming, while children's television after the 1980s focused on selling toys?

The bottom line is that children are particularly susceptible to advertising, and their likes tend to blur the line between storytelling and advertising. However, while advertisers love to sell toys, the toys themselves are relatively blameless.

Toys can be an essential component of what is known as "unstructured play," which is developmentally necessary for young children. Unlike structured play (where a parent or teacher leads a fun activity with learning goals in mind), unstructured play occurs when a child is simply allowed to do what he or she wants to do. This includes everything from playing tag outside with friends to assembling a Lego set by himself. The Super Mario LEGO set has more goals and objectives than, say, a non-electronic Mario action figure, but still, the overall experience is left entirely to the child's discretion.

That said, the Lego figure that Super Mario calls his brother definitely crosses the line of taste. Unstructured play is the child's last bastion against the advertising world. Television, mobile games, and streaming services constantly inundate children with advertisements, and in many cases, children are still too young to know that advertising is different from more traditional forms of storytelling.

Toys, on the other hand, are detached from the desire to buy more stuff and allow children to use their imagination. Formless play is all about self-sufficiency. Advertising is there to make people (including children) believe that their current situation is not enough. Mario calling his Lego brother is certainly not as invasive as a loud, repetitive TV ad. However, Mario "wakes up" in the middle of formless play and wonders aloud why this child does not have more toys. Cute and harmless advertisements are still advertisements.

The whole situation becomes even more lame when you remember that Mario didn't always call Luigi. This is the result of a firmware update. Parents who purchased the Lego Mario set for their children had no way of knowing at the time that it would become a talking advertisement for other product lines. And they had no way of knowing what Mario and his friends might try to sell in the future. While not necessarily an ethical issue, Lego's Mario toys have better things to do than become living advertisements.

While it may bring a sad, "Will someone please think of the children?" killjoy, I think it's worth separating advertising from shapeless play for children. By advertising the Luigi set, Lego's Super Mario toys crossed that line and set a bad precedent. It is especially disappointing for a company that makes promises like Lego's:

"Free play is how children develop their imagination and is the foundation of creativity. Curiosity asks "why" and imagines possible explanations. Playfulness asks "what if?" and imagines fantasies and fictions of how the everyday could become extraordinary. Dreaming is the first step toward doing it.

Mario's latest update is not particularly creative, curious or playful.